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Citi ended its temporary feature offering transfers from ThankYou points to American Airlines yesterday, but they’ve returned today with a brand new – and seemingly permanent – transfer partner.
You can now transfer Citi ThankYou points to Wyndham Rewards on a 1,000:1,000 or 1,000:800 basis depending on what Citi cards you have.
Here are the different transfer options:
1,000:1,000 transfers
- Citi Prestige
- Citi Premier
1,000:800 transfers
- Citi ThankYou Preferred
- Citi Rewards+
- Citi Double Cash
This is a fantastic development because it means that Citi has gone from having zero hotel transfer partners to having two of them in the space of a month (Choice Privileges was the first).
While Wyndham and Choice are my two least favorite hotel loyalty programs, they both have their sweet spots and usefulness. With Wyndham you can get outsized value when using points for Vacasa vacation home rentals seeing as they only cost 15,000 points per bedroom per night. As Nick and Greg have both shown, that can provide great value, especially when staying in properties that only have one official bedroom but have additional sleeping arrangements like a mezzanine floor with a bed that doesn’t count as a bedroom.
Most Wyndham properties cost 7,500 or 15,000 points per night to book, but some cost 30,000 points per night. If you have a Wyndham Business Earner credit card you get a 10% instant discount when booking awards meaning that those award levels only cost 6,750, 13,500 or 27,000 points per night respectively. Unlike IHG which offers IHG Select cardholders a 10% points rebate several weeks after their stay (which means you need enough points for the full award cost up front), Wyndham gives that 10% discount when you book. If you’re transferring in from Citi ThankYou, that therefore reduces how many points you need to transfer in the first place.
Wyndham Rewards was already a transfer partner of Capital One, but having the ability to transfer ThankYou points to the program is a great addition if you’re locked out of the Capital One ecosystems for one reason or another.
What’s also good to see is that many Citi cardholders who don’t have a Prestige or Premier card can still transfer their ThankYou points to Wyndham Rewards, albeit at a lesser transfer ratio (1,000:800). That includes the ThankYou Preferred, Rewards+ and Double Cash cards, but sadly the Custom Cash card doesn’t get any love seeing as that’s the only ThankYou-earning card I have right now. Then again, I have a fairly healthy stash of Wyndham Rewards points and so don’t have an immediate need to transfer ThankYou points in the first place.
Citi’s website states that transfers to Wyndham could take up to five business days. However, Greg has already done a transfer and confirmed the points showed up in his account instantly.
It’ll be interesting to see if Wyndham Rewards becomes a transfer partner for other transferable currencies in the coming months or if Citi will add even more transfer partners, whether that’s another hotel partner or perhaps American Airlines making a permanent return as a transfer partner.
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Hard to reconcile Choice at 2:1 versus Wyndham at 1:1 (or worse). Given similar point values, would have expected same transfer ratio, or at least 1.5. Potentially a bad sign for Choice dropping to 1:1 in the future. I’d transfer to Choice at 2:1, but to neither program at 1:1.
garbage point value at Wyndham
no one wants to spend 30K points on a less than $100 hotel
Except that Wyndham is has an extremely valuable relationship with Vacasa Vacation Rentals. VVR charges a flat 15K point per room per night when booked through Wyndham, meaning that if you find a 1 bedroom vacation rental in a popular vacation area during peak times, you could be getting a ton of value for your points. Furthermore, Nick has reported through his own experience that many of the properties that are classified as one or two bedrooms in realty have a loft space / living room pull-out that can sleep many more. Every program has its sweet spots.
It’s nice that Citi added a second hotel transfer partner, but the transfer ratio of 800 to 1000 for the no fee cards doesn’t seem very compelling.
In fairness to Citi, Chase doesn’t allow any transfers from no fee cards, and Amex only allows no AF transfers from a business card. Also the Rewards plus will rebate 10% of points so it’s really more like 800 for 900.
Good point!
Small correction: the no fee Amex Everyday card also allows point transfers.
Yikes, not sure how that one slipped my mind. Not that the ED is particularly interesting.
It’s a great no fee option to stash your MR and there are often lucrative upgrades to the EDP which is very interesting.
Not something I’m interested in but at least they’re trying. Wishful thinking but if we could have another access to Hyatt besides Chase/Ultimate Rewards that’d be awesome.
A loss of Hyatt exclusivity would basically destroy the Chase UR program. Citi, Amex and Cap One are all easier to earn non-SUB points.
Hyatt is a partner with Built rewards but since that’s a new probably not too much a threat. Plus it’s not great if you own.
AA got me in the Premier/TY arena with 100k points transferred yesterday – Wyndham & Choice will make me stay. Citi is finally competitive with some (easily) usable partners.
Are you happy with yourselves for causing this ?
Wyndham and especially Choice hotels are for drug dealers and gang-bangers.
Of course, since I’m looking to get beaten up, which will cause me to shop for drugs, this is a great transfer for me.
The only thing more embarrassing than staying at a Choice hotel is admitting you stayed at a Choice hotel.
Staying at these hotel chains is like playing slot machines in a 7-11 in Vegas . Actually not even that good, come to think of it, as 7-11 has a rewards program giving free sodas and donuts for players.
BTW, I’m waiting for an answer on my application to work at FM.
Perfect troll